I like getting involved, and at the
Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences I was department representative, vice-president and president of the
Graduate Student Council in the previous two years. I also used to run the Classics Department Happy Hours every Friday (yes, a whole bunch of classicists and would-be-classicists getting drunk together - it's as fun as it sounds !) This year I am the Resident Advisor on the second floor of Child Hall, a graduate residence hall. I am a teaching fellow for two sections of "Rome of Augustus" (Literature & Arts C 61), a core course in the Classics Department. Last semester I taught "Images of Alexander the Great" (Literature and Arts B 21) in the Department of Art History, and that course got me interested in numismatics. Right now it looks like my future academic career will be heading toward ancient coins. In classics, my main interests are Platonic epistemology/ontology and Cicero bashing. I have definite opinions about what rocks (Plato, tragedies, Homer) and what sucks (Cicero, Aristotle, Apollonius), and I guess I should learn not to make my opinions known at every opportune and inopportune moment...
Gin&Tonic, Sapphire, please !
I did my undergraduate work at
Brooklyn College, City University of New York , where I was driving the administrators and deans crazy changing my major on a bi-weekly basis. Music, Philosophy, Comparative Literature and Italian were among my more popular choices, but one day, after hitting my head really, really hard, I finally decided to stick with Classics. Check out the
Departmant of Classics homepage at my alma mater. When I graduated in 1996, I graduated summa cum laude with honors in Classics, (but I ain't bragging !) with minors in Italian and Philosophy.
"I think I'm dumb ... maybe just happy." (Nirvana)
A brief history of my life
born: yes (on August 20, 1972 in Aachen, Germany)
astrological sign: Leo
places I have lived: Aachen, Germany; Los Angeles; Indianapolis; New York City; Cambridge, MA
places I want to live: anywhere in Italy
brother: Thorge Eckert (born June 17, 1975). He studies international economics (I think) at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands and is a pretty decent and brilliant guy. This year he is spending a year in Toulouse, France trying to improve his French and become more brilliant than he already is. I love him like crazy !
sister: Anorthe Eckert (born Sept. 21, 1976). She studies piano at the music conservatory in Dresden, Germany. I love her like crazy !!!
parents: yes, two
cats: various felines in various countries -- Otello (no 'h'), a blue Persian, lives in Belgium. Montserrat (aka Monster) and Beniamino (aka Benny) are two tabbies who live in New York City. Honorable mention: Pamina (aka Mienchen), a black Persian cat, living with Otello in Belgium and Trudi, my sister's crazy cat
"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost." (Leonard Cohen)
Various opinions, facts, and miscellaneous information about myself
Favorite Saints: St. Anthony and St. Francis
Favorite Color: black !
Most embarassing admission: I like Modern Talking !
Favorite Philosophical Doctrine: The Categorical Imperative, of course
Favorite Philosophical Theory: Plato's Theory of Forms -- how can you beat that ?
Least Favorite Philosophy: Existentialism (if it all doesn't matter, please don't write about it - although that quote on top of my page rocks !), Skepticism (ugh. Shut up already !)
Favorite Poets: Dante, Ungaretti, Pavese, Prevert
Favorite Classic Writers: Emil Zola, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Cesare Pavese, Hermann Hesse, Dino Buzzati
Favorite Modern Women Writers: Margaret Atwood, Tanja Kinkel, Natalia Ginzburg, Ingrid Noll
Favorite Shakespeare Plays : Macbeth, Hamlet
Least Favorite Shakespeare Plays : any of the "comedies" in which women dress up as men, The Tempest (sorry, I just don't get what everybody loves so much about this play)
Favorite Places in the World : Sicily, Bologna, Ascoli Piceno, Urbino, Cividale dei Friuli (all in Italy); Cazorla, Granada (both in Spain); Cologne train station at 9:04
pm, track 8, catching the overnighter to Bologna; or being anywhere wrapped into my comfortable blanket, about to fall asleep.
Favorite spelling change in Ancient Greek : Quantitative metathesis (very closely followed by the nasal infix)
Favorite linguistic items : spurious diphthongs, dissimilation of aspirants and anything that has to do with laryngeals !
Favorite Syntax : Genitive of Indefinite Value (Latin), Accusative of Respect (Greek and Latin), Datives of Advantage and Disadvantage (Latin), Dative of the Possessor of the Body Part in Question (Latin), but they all pale in comparison to Relative clauses of Characteristic
Favorite Verb Form : Verbal adjectives !!!
Least Favorite Items of Grammar :-mi verbs, correlatives, the Pluperfect, Latin words with three letters
(num, tum, tam, cum, iam, dum ...)
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